Tarif El Hoss.
Mr Tarif El Hoss is an independant scholar. He is also a partner and managing director of El Hoss Engineering and Transport Company in Kuwait.
In preparation for this lecture, El Hoss traveled across Russia on the TransSiberian Express to get a first hand view of the vastness of the area covered by the author, albeit in much easier conditions. As a graduate student at AUB, his Master’s thesis focused on Islamic inscribed metalwork in The al-Sabah Collection.
From Beirut to Siberia and Back: Life of an Ottoman officer in exile based on his unpublished war diaries (1916-1919)
The talk will present a first hand view of life during the First World War (WWI), from the perspective of an Arab Ottoman officer captured in Russia. The lecture is based on his unpublished wartime diaries, presented to the lecturer by the author’s daughter. The lecture will shed light on the trials and tribulations of this Lebanese youth who cut short his studies at the Syrian Protestant College in 1916 to volunteer in the Ottoman army, his subsequent capture by the Russians on the Caucasian front, his incarceration in Siberia and eventual escape, to finally return home in 1919. While many first hand reports of life in prisoner of war camps during WWI exist from Allied sources, records from Ottoman officers are less common.